


Not The One To Praise

by genarti



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, moral ambiguity seems a redundant thing to tag a post-Ultron fic, team-building the Natasha Romanov way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-14 18:57:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7186082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/pseuds/genarti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a month after Ultron.  Tony Stark is officially retired, unofficially constantly tinkering, and Natasha Romanoff and Steve Rogers have a new Avengers team to lead, even if the ink's not on the contracts yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not The One To Praise

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [This is how it goes (the One Day At A Time remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7013878) by [Jadesfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadesfire/pseuds/Jadesfire). 



"You were wrong," she says, and looks up at Steve. One corner of her mouth tucks in. It's the kind of involuntary expression she could override, and chooses not to. "You said we'd fight Ultron together. Lose together, if that's what it came down to."

"Are you saying we didn't?" He's got his arms folded, and those blond brows drawn together. He's looking out at the horizon. Oaks and maples and ash, red-coned brushes of sumac down by the tree line, the kind of grey clouded sky that people call gloomy, although Natasha kind of likes it -- all the standard ingredients of the northeastern US. Steve's stare is that particular Cap stare, clear-eyed and self-castigating and focusing in on half the point.

It's a month after Ultron. ( _Ultron_ , they say as if that sums up everything, and they've all said it so much that now it kind of does. There are dangers in that sort of shorthand, but it's convenient.) Long enough to know something of how things are going to fall, though bureaucracy could always still bring them surprises. Tony Stark is officially retired, unofficially constantly tinkering, and Natasha Romanoff and Steve Rogers have a new Avengers team to lead, even if the ink's not on the contracts yet.

"I'm saying together wasn't enough. We needed a different together. A different team, different people, a different approach long before it got to the stage of reacting to Ultron. Unity can go a lot of bad places, and I know you know that."

He looks at her now, and not the horizon. His mouth is a hard line. She knows he knows this, but she wants him to hear her say it anyway.

"Sokovia didn't teach us anything but what we already knew."

Steve doesn't argue. He says instead, "Is this about Tony?"

"It's about all of us. I'm just saying, we have the chance to do a better job this time."

"Guess we better do it right."

Natasha suppresses a roll of her eyes, because he might or might not take it wrong. Steve's feeling guilty today, like most days, and today it's making him defensive. "I get why you stuck with it," she says. "So did I, remember? We saved the world, Steve. Not just a country, or a few hundred lives, or a good leader here or there. We didn't just save the 'free' world from the rest of it." She probably shouldn't put that much cynicism in those words in front of a cranky Steve Rogers, tactically speaking, even if it's toned down from what she could say. But she's trying to be honest with her friends these days, at least as long as she can afford to. And she's seen far too many definitions of the free world and how to save it. "We saved the _world_ from Loki and the Chitauri. That's a huge thing. And we had the team we had. You can't bench these guys, replace them with a back-up who can handle the same stuff. We didn't have time to change the roster. Hell, depending on when you asked me, I don't know that I'd've kept me on it."

"Do you want off the team, Nat?"

She looks him in the eye. "Not now."

Steve studies her back, and nods. "Then what are you saying?"

"Looks like we're the team leaders, unless we say no. So -- if we are -- it's not enough to say we're not letting that happen again. We need to make sure it doesn't. Before we're in a position where it might. I've spent a lot more time as a lone agent than a team lead, Steve. Now my face is up all over the internet, and I can't fly under the radar like I used to. I'm trying to figure out how to do what I'm doing."

Steve is silent for a long moment. Then he smiles at her, and it's a real smile, a Steve smile, all wry sadness and none of the Cap polish. He really is absurdly open. "Yeah," he says. "Me too."

That's about what she expected. Steve is a good leader, and a good tactician, but she's never been starry-eyed over the Star Spangled American Icon even before she got to know him, and these days she knows how much he improvises. Besides, we're-in-this-together is a standard alliance-building tactic, even if that's probably not how he's thinking about it. But there's only so far honesty will carry them, without an actual plan.

"I think we've got a better shot this time. Wanda's the only real wild card. Everybody else -- we're not as powerful, but we know how to work on teams."

"Yeah. Everybody's been through boot camp."

Literally, even, for most of them; she's not sure whether Steve's including her in that or not, and that's not a hair she feels like splitting right now. Either way, she makes an expression of agreement.

"We'll sit down together with the files tonight," Steve says. He hooks his thumbs into his belt and gives a determined stare to the horizon. "Figure out what we've gotta do to make sure everybody knows everybody, make sure we work as a team. We've got time, so let's take it. Get ourselves thinking like a team before we go into the field."

"That's not all." He glances at her, and she meets his eyes. "We need to talk about what we should go into the field for and what we shouldn't. What's for the Avengers, and what's for Interpol and the UN."

She's almost lost the habit of saying _and S.H.I.E.L.D._ Natasha Romanoff has always been quick to adapt. Still, it hangs in the air between them, before Steve nods.

* * *

Does she blame Tony for Ultron? Of course.

Bruce, too, wherever he is. And all of them who had any part in not preventing it, not doing better. They're all guilty. Her ledger was red long before thousands died in Johannesburg and Sokovia, but those deaths stained her hands bloodier than they've been in a long, long time.

But blame is for other people. It's not her job. She remembers; she accounts for past actions in present and future calculations, and she remembers the risks, the moral compromises, the data about what someone can be brought to do and can bring themselves to do. But she sees no point in scolding. Legal consequences are for other people to impose, or not. Making sure Tony feels bad enough about this is Tony's own job. If Pepper and Rhodey and maybe even Steve want to sign up for helping, that's their call. And moral judgment should probably be reserved for people with less blood on their hands.

Natasha looks forward.

If she didn't, she'd be dead, or she'd be off living a quiet life, apologizing uselessly to the world every minute of every day until she died. And maybe that would be better, who knows -- maybe it's more morally righteous -- but then again, if she were doing that, maybe she'd be living a quiet life under the rule of Loki and the Chitauri. She's not made for inaction, and she'd rather put black in her ledger where she can. So she looks forward.

Tony thinks he understands that. She's not sure he's got a handle yet on the balance between looking forward and learning from what's done, though.

If he were any good at living a quiet life either, she wouldn't worry so much about that.

* * *

Natasha believes in honesty with herself. Honesty with other people is, if not actually impossible, certainly a weaker word than most people think. But you have to know yourself, first and foremost and down to the bone. If you don't, it doesn't matter how well you know anyone else around you; you'll surprise yourself in the field, and probably at a terrible moment.

So she admits to herself, as she'd admit to no one else, that Wanda Maximoff scares her. There's a certain irony to it -- how different, really, is what Wanda does from what she does, except that Wanda has a shortcut? But Wanda does have a shortcut, a little back door into everyone's brain, no matter how carefully they guard themselves against her.

Natasha spends a little while sitting with that knowledge, up on the roof of the half-built Avengers HQ. (Safety regulations say she absolutely shouldn't be here, but she's seen Tony perching all over this scaffolding, and if it'll hold the Iron Man armor it'll hold five of her. Clint's rubbed off on her over the years, with his strategy of perching up high where no one will think to bother him with small talk or paperwork.) Then, she goes to find Wanda. It's the same as the Hulk, from the opposite direction: if she's afraid, down deep, then she needs to look what she's afraid of in the face until she knows it, and knows how to predict it, and knows that it's a friend.

That means a motorcycle ride several miles south to the apartment being rented on Wanda's behalf, for her to share with a Maria Hill-approved 'roommate' to keep an eye on her. Cicero is a town big enough for a newcomer to pass unnoticed and small enough to not have a lot of trouble available, old by America's standards, once solidly established on a foundation of farming and the Erie Canal, now faded into picturesque obscurity and suburbia. There's always the risk of someone recognizing her face from the news of Sokovia -- that's true anywhere in the world, for any of them -- but people mostly see what they expect. You get outside the big cities that think the world revolves around them, and everyone thinks _nah, they couldn't be here_ and second-guesses, especially if you help them along with a haircut and some body language. 

Wanda has been living like a hermit. It's not surprising. She got used to loss a long time ago, but now she's lost the two constants that sustained her: her twin, and her revenge.

Natasha rings the bell, counts thirty seconds until the door opens, and gives ex-Agent Anna Quesnel (Rochester born and raised, prudent enough to open a door with one hand on the pistol under her oversized sweater) a bright smile. "Here for your roomie," she says, as she breezes in.

Wanda is curled up on the couch, wide-eyed and wary. In her rings and eyeliner and bruised uncertainty, she looks about sixteen, but Natasha has never been susceptible to that kind of vulnerability. "Come on," Natasha says, in Russian. "We're going out for coffee." Wanda's slow to react, which might be numbness or might be more wariness, and is probably some of each. Natasha's in the kind of mood to react to that with another grin, and satisfaction at Wanda's confusion. "Don't you want to see the big city?"

The big city would be Syracuse, which isn't really very big, but will be the closest thing the Avengers HQ has to a local city once it's finished. They don't go all the way there, though. Instead Natasha picks Frank's Plank Road Café, because the name delights her. Wanda revives enough to give her a dubious look, which is a nice bonus. The coffee is diner coffee, hot and plentiful and straightforwardly mediocre, and the menu has charmingly haphazard capitalization. She gets Manhattan clam chowder ("*Spicy") and what the menu calls Julianne Salad. 

Wanda orders chicken fingers, after a little surreptitious terminology-checking, and picks at them. Mostly, she drinks cup after cup of coffee. Each times, she makes a face and adds more sugar, but she drinks it. Her black nail polish is chipped and scanty, but she hasn't redone it. It adds to the teenaged look. Natasha assesses the effect with habitual professionalism. It's pretty good; Wanda looks like any sullen, gothy teenager, instead of the grieving adult and international war criminal she is.

Natasha sips her coffee. She wants strong tea with jam in it, which is part of why she came to a place with terrible tea and American-style coffee instead. These moments of sense-memory and nostalgia -- the taste of sweet cherry and tea on her tongue, the tension of an arched foot jammed into lambswool, the sticky dryness of rosin and the faint lingering perfume of gunpowder -- have been slow to be shaken off, after Wanda's little flashback trick in Johannesburg. They're not all bad, but they're private, and Wanda doesn't get to see them just yet, or maybe ever; Natasha's memories, like everything else about her, are something she wants under her own control.

"Do you know," she says abruptly, still in Russian, "about my sisters?"

Wanda's look of wide-eyed astonishment is, she thinks, genuine. Wanda's good at hiding, but lying's not her strong suit. "No," she says.

So she triggers memories, but she doesn't see what she's done. That's useful information. It's also a dangerous way to be insulated from your own deeds -- and a very human way, but then that's redundant.

Natasha spears another slice of Julianned chicken. She hasn't thought about Ulyana in years. "Maybe someday I'll tell you about them."

When the silence stretches, Wanda buries a resentful look in her coffee cup. Because she doesn't ask, Natasha unbends enough to add, "Past tense."

They're not all dead. But one way or another, she's the one who's left.

She changes the subject while Wanda's still working on hiding her reaction to that. "Do you want to be an Avenger?"

Wanda sets her coffee down with a tiny clink. Her rings glint. "I thought I already was."

"You are. That's not what I asked."

"Then yes."

"You want to save the world and play with Tony Stark's toys?" Natasha says it coolly, as a challenge. If Wanda can't handle a low blow or two she needs to know that right now, before they're anywhere near the field, before she's even anywhere near team training.

Wanda jerks a little, stung, and there's a momentary flicker of red at her fingertips. Natasha keeps her eyes on the coffee steam, and watches Wanda's face in her peripheral vision. But Wanda masters herself, and smiles back, just as coolly. "Didn't I already do that?"

Natasha lets herself laugh for a low breath. _A point, little one_ , she thinks; there's a viciousness in that congratulation, since it's a quote from her childhood's teachers, and that's another Red Room memory that's been slow to fade. But Wanda's earned that. "Some people would want to stop there."

Wanda looks down. She picks up her spoon to stir her coffee again, unnecessarily, and watches the spoon circle. "Yes," she says. "Part of me does want to. But -- then I'd've stopped there."

It's probably Clint's fault that Natasha gives into her impulse to clink her mug against Wanda's for that one. She can't remember if it's a gesture that makes any sense in Sokovian culture. But from the rueful shadow of a smile Wanda gives her, she gets what Natasha means.

* * *

Tony is at HQ to check how everyone's upgraded equipment is working. At least, that's the ostensible reason. Natasha is pretty sure that the reason he came out here in person is about one third boredom and one third a deep, obvious, and unacknowledged desire to still be considered part of the team. The remaining third is to check on their equipment.

Pepper's come along. Partly to supervise Tony, maybe, but mostly for her own reasons, which Natasha respects. Pepper is formidably competent. 

She's in between meetings, though, and they're both standing in the observation deck over the training room, sipping coffee and watching Tony and Rhodey put the new Iron Patriot suit through its paces. It looks good. Rhodey's maneuvering smoothly, with no glitches so far, and some of the weaknesses of the last suit have been ameliorated. 

"They're both good," Natasha says, into her coffee's steam. She doesn't demand good coffee, but its constant availability is a nice thing about Avengers HQ. "Although Tony's a little out of practice."

Pepper can smile like a spy, real and a mask at once. "I don't let him use the suit at home. Makes too much of a mess."

"Also, he's supposed to be retired."

"Yes. That too."

Interesting. 

After a moment (and a glance at Clint, engaged in a silent but pitched battle with a complicated expense report), Pepper shrugs. "I guess Avengers aren't very good at standing down."

"It's hard to give up," Natasha says, neutrally. "And it's not like we can't use the help. There's too much information out there for any one person to go through. Some of Tony's data-scraping programs have been life-savers. Literally."

"That's good to hear." But Pepper is competent, and Pepper hears what's not being said, even when it's a lot more subtle than Natasha is bothering with now. And she often chooses to bring the subtext right out into the open to talk about it, which is one of the things Natasha likes about her. "You don't think he should be here, do you?"

"I didn't say that. I just don't know that it's good for the team to have Tony dropping in and out like this. We're running missions, and we need to work together. We need to know each other."

"You know him," says Pepper, and Natasha puts a little effort into not raising her eyebrows. Pepper says that as if that's a defense; as if what they know about Tony Stark isn't that he's been a loose cannon or a liability as many times as he saved the day. She knows Pepper and Tony have been having problems, and she knows Pepper's not innocent either -- her work with Stark Industries started long before they stopped making weapons that weren't attached to Tony Stark, even if Pepper didn't design anything herself -- but if Pepper Potts is trying to overcorrect into supportive girlfriend, that might be a problem. Too soon to say.

"Not in the field, we don't," she says. "And out there, it's the thing you don't know that kills you."

She thinks of skyscrapers in Johannesburg. She thinks of Tony Stark, wanting to look at the Mind Gem just for a day or two, before Thor took it back to Asgard.

Pepper looks at her. "You're trying to protect the team."

Natasha looks back. Steve's trick: open, direct honesty. It's Natasha's trick too, but the difference is that Natasha knows honesty's as dirty a trick as any other, and Steve likes to think it isn't. "I'm trying to protect all of us. Including Tony."

"Are you saying you want him to go away?" Pepper is squared up now, tensed for battle in her armor of tailored silk, ready to be angry and already hurt in the way that means she knows Natasha has a point.

"I'm saying that in the end, he's going to have to make a decision. And live with the consequences."

"There are always consequences," Pepper says tightly.

True enough.

Natasha gives her a small nod, granting the point, and looks back at Tony and Rhodey, and Sam swooping down to join them. She thinks: let's see who pays those consequences. And she thinks: in the end, we're all making the decisions.

She'll talk to Steve again. To Rhodey, to Sam, to Wanda, to Clint. She doesn't want Tony away from the team, necessarily -- he's a powerful asset, as much as a powerful liability -- but she wants all of them to do better this time. And this is their team now, with all the weight that brings.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the 2016 MCU Rolling Remix exchange, and is a remix of Jadesfire's excellent "[This is how it goes](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MCURollingRemix2016/works/7013878)" (and one section borrows a good bit of dialogue from that fic.) It was remixed into the likewise excellent "[Four Quiet Lives Natasha Never Lived, and How It Always Turned Out](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7370191)" by likeadeuce. You can view the whole remix chain [here](http://muccamukk.dreamwidth.org/1044955.html#cutid1). I had tons of fun with the whole thing!


End file.
